


Scenes From The Battle of Us

by MonsterTesk



Category: Justified
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-10
Updated: 2014-09-10
Packaged: 2018-02-16 21:08:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2284509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonsterTesk/pseuds/MonsterTesk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I sold my mind on the street. I learned another language. It translates easily. Here's how: What I say is not what I mean, nor is it ever what I meant to say. You must not believe me when I say there's nothing left to love in this world."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scenes From The Battle of Us

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary from Cate Marvin. I can't sleep. Have it. Have it all.

Raylan hates the way Boyd says his name like other two syllable words that have no place in the now. Not that they ever had a place, no. That never happened. He says it like parched lips that wrap around the mouth of a bottle full of blissful oblivion soon to be followed by stabbing pain. He says it the way the sun sets before it sets over the hills of the holler. Like the chirp of frogs on a hot summer night promising water just beyond the ridge. Like the set of nails to a mosquito bite that signals the point at which one more scratch will make the welt of skin turn into a small open wound.

Boyd says Raylan’s name like it’s the answer to a question neither of them ever was brave or stupid enough to ask. He says it with the same teeth he strikes the match needed to light the fuse. Like the quiet click of the safety on a gun being thumbed off. Like the cries of birds that signal the sun to rise an hour before it will actually rise. Raylan hates it.

He hates the things he hears where the vowels of his name should be. He hates the way it wets his mouth like no drink ever could. He hates the aggressive numbness that comes afterwards. He hates the way it darkens the world when that word leaves Boyd’s mouth. He hates how cold it makes him feel and he hates how similar it is to tonguing at a rotted tooth yet to be pulled. He hates how it makes him so easy to rile when Boyd says his name slow and quick, practiced yet awkward. He hates how it makes him want to draw and start shooting. He hates how he’s not sure what he’d shoot at. He hates the false dawn of Boyd’s lips stretched wide around the two syllables like they mean something other than Raylan.

It wasn’t the woman with the red hair and stained lips that made Raylan realize, no. It wasn’t her or her literal fucking Jezebel role in his shitty little county full of his shitty small town people. It wasn’t her when she tried to buy the land from his people or the way her fingers had trailed over the wooden pews of the courtroom as she had said, surprised, breathless, “Oh my,” while looking between Boyd and Raylan like they’d just shared something secret. No, it wasn’t her.

But a dry-eyed young woman with hair so dark it had purled around her like coal smoke as she had smiled around a cigarette and told Raylan with soft eyes that the two of them fought like it was making love back when he was nineteen and scared and trying so hard to put some bite behind his bark of threats to leave. She had held out her hand as he’d sat down on the curb next to her, breathless, with the taste of blood on his teeth. Her nails had been white with a fine line of dirt under them right up against the pink of her skin as he’d taken the lit cigarette from her and inhaled the language of her people, of the west. Raylan had blown smoke out onto the road as Boyd laughed, rolling over on the asphalt, spitting blood and sentiments that should have been unforgiving and hard but instead slipped into Raylan’s ears like promises and kind words. She had tipped her straw hat at him like she was the cowboy of his dreams and Raylan had frowned at her a small, confined thing as she smiled. His heart had beat funny in his chest as she wiped dirt from the back of her tight jeans, stomped her boots, and walked off down the road, towards nothing, towards freedom.

“You’ll get it some day,” she had trailed behind her, lighting another cigarette as her feet crunched dead leaves. He didn’t tell her that it wasn’t him that needed to get it, that it wasn’t him that didn’t understand what this all meant. He may have been the better of the two of them at never acknowledging his own faults but he was not the one who could convince the devil to sleep in when there was sin to commit. Boyd was always the one able to talk anyone into anything. Raylan was more the type to shove the square peg into a round hole until it fit which is why he hates the way he says Boyd’s name.

Raylan hates the way he says Boyd’s name because of that—because of his sheer bullheadedness. He hates the way he says Boyd’s name like Arlo spat out insults at the mother of his child. Like redacted government documents; more black than illuminating. Like the finality in the clink of ice at the bottom of a glass of poison. Like the slow unsteady drip of a leaky faucet, holding more inside than the pipes should handle. Like the crack of idle knuckles. Like the splash of piss in the bathtub when it’s late at night and the lights are out. Like the tap of steel toe boots into a wiry thigh, signaling the end of lunch break and the start of the rest of their time in the black.

He hates how he says Boyd’s name like the question to answers he’s never going to get. He hates the way Boyd’s eyes sparkle with a mirth as if Raylan is saying a joke but doesn’t quite realize it yet. He hates the way he can keep in everything else except that one hard syllable. He hates how he makes it sound as if there’s nothing but two consonants separated by the burble of a prematurely truncated creak. He hates how he threads a warning right there where the O and the Y line up like hooks for a curtain rod, waiting to hang shades meant to blot the inside from view.

But most importantly Raylan hates the way it was never him who never had a plan, an idea, a way to get out and survive. He hates the way it was Boyd who was the indecisive one, the one who couldn’t make up his mind over this or that. He hates the way Boyd would flirt with doing something about it, about the way they said each other’s name, but always back out right before it became critical. He hates the way even years later Boyd can’t say his name without that slow purr like getting to say Raylan’s name to Raylan’s face is the best thing he could do that week. It doesn’t take too long, too much effort, for Raylan to start hating the man who says his name instead of the way he says it.

It takes men hanging from trees like plump apples of knowledge that Boyd grew himself then acted like poor Eve when he was the snake that convinced himself to try and pluck these men’s hearts. It takes blowing up a church. It takes inking his skin with hateful marks. It takes acquiring a whore house, dealing dope, killing men, entangling himself so deep into a criminal mindset that even if he were to think on why he said Raylan’s name like that there would never be a way for them to hiss _RaylanBoyd_ into the dark, into slick skin and panting mouths and smiling eyes.

It takes Raylan shooting at Boyd’s heart and missing – again – except this time slightly more literally than he ever would hope. It takes Bo getting shot up. It takes Ava’s sweet mouth. It takes Bowman full of Ava’s home cooked lead. It takes Boyd setting himself up with Duffy. It takes Wynona hushing Raylan as he fucks her into his dirty motel mattress. It takes the first time Raylan heard his baby cry.

It takes a man sitting on the stairs leading up to the criminal’s home he’s legally squatting in. It takes a folder thicker than the whisky he pours into two glasses. It takes Boyd looking up at him with sad, grieving, eyes as he says, “This’ll put you away.”

“I know,” Boyd says and swallows his drink in one go. He smiles at Raylan like he did the day Raylan said he was leaving this fucking place. “I want out, my friend. I’m tired of all…this.” He waves between Raylan and the glass in front of him. Raylan’s chest feels concave, so hollow it’s folding in on itself from the sternum out.

“Maybe if you tell what you know…”

Boyd laughs like knives hidden against ankles under the loose cut of a boot slightly too large.

“When have you ever known me to be cooperative, Raylan?” he says in a voice as dark as the drink held in Raylan’s white knuckles.

“Never. But I know you, Boyd. You adapt; always come out ahead.”

Boyd stretches out his hand across the lacquer of a tabletop neither of them could ever afford, stopping halfway to Raylan’s hand.

“What if I don’t want to come out on top? Raylan?”

Raylan shakes his head, fingers hurting where he digs them into the table eight inches from Boyd’s own. He knows he’s frowning that small frown shaped like a cat trying to stuff itself into a box too small for it, the boundaries of it too hard to bend with its desire to fit.

“Boyd—”

Boyd’s smile wavers, rumbling like the walls of the mine before it starts to fight back against the intrusion of civilized men inside of it.

“Raylan,” he says in a steady voice that’s too much like the first trickle of pebbles down the walls of the black, too much like he finally, finally understands. Raylan hates it. “I’m not getting out of this alive.”

Raylan takes in a deep breath, loosens his fingers until they curl against the table, slides them, knuckles dragging until they are impeded by Boyd’s own. He looks Boyd in the eyes, those eyes he’s hated since they looked up into the sky, coal dust and shouts settling behind him as Raylan’s heart beat wildly, with gratitude at the vastness and impassivity of the world around him, and resists the urge to hiss at him what Boyd had shouted into his ear as the world crumbled around him.

“Boyd,” he says but he means, “run.”

Boyd picks up Raylan’s hand, rubs over Raylan’s empty ring finger softly then stands in a way that shouts his resoluteness to the rooftops.

“It’s too late, Raylan,” he says but Raylan thinks he means something else until he doesn’t. Boyd stoops over, kisses Raylan’s forehead with soft lips that hide sharp teeth and whispers, “I’m so sorry, baby.” He lets go of Raylan’s weak hand and leaves on quiet feet.

Raylan closes his eyes and breathes deep. He decides as he pours another helping into Boyd’s glass and takes a sip. He won’t run after this cave in like he did the last. Raylan raises Boyd’s glass to the empty seat across from him and toasts the man who should have been there.

“Raylan,” he says quietly the way he could never say his name, with all the things he tried to ignore until he couldn’t. It’s easier to do than with the name he usually tries to shove all that into. He can see why Boyd likes to say it so much.


End file.
